Bi-Weekly Book Reviews for Ambitious Achievers

Tim Ferriss

What if I told you that I lost 5% bodyfat and 13.6lbs in 30 days with no exercise and only dieting 6 days a week? That’s exactly what I’m telling you.

January 1 – February 7th (I forgot to take after pictures on the first of Feb.)

If you had told me a year ago there was a way to lose 13.6 lbs as well as 5% bodyfat in 30 days with no exercise, I would have laughed at you. In the past month however, I experienced this first-hand. This post explains which book I got the information from and how things happened.

Tim Ferriss is at the top of the list of podcasters that I listen to on a regular basis. Until buying his books at the end of last year, passive listening was all I had done. Now that I’m not under a self-imposed deadline to read a book a week, I figured 2017 is time for self-experimentation. Ferriss excels at this (a self described “Human guinea pig”) and advocates that people optimize their lives.

His second book, “The 4-Hour Body” was published in 2010 and reached #1 on the New York Times Bestseller list. I purchased this book with a specific outcome in mind, rather than filling my mind with fitness information, I wanted a measurable result.

Derek Sivers, one of Ferriss’s podcast guests and founder of CDbaby.com, is on record as saying

“If information were the answer, we would all be billionaires with perfect abs.”

I knew that having access to information wasn’t the answer, it was having a framework which I could consistently apply select information to my life.

If you’re wondering why you would pick up The 4-Hour Body, this is why. You’ll read a portion of the book and get an an actionable experiment to try.

One last mindset before I show you the nitty-gritty of my last 30 days. Arthur Jones, the inventor of the Nautilus Exercise machines, is the father of what Ferriss calls the “Minimum Effective Dose.” Put simply, this is the mindset that says that a certain input that creates a desired result is exactly what you do. Anything less and you don’t get the result, any more and there will be side effects. In order to build this mindset, Jones admonishes on pg 20:

“REMEMBER: It is impossible to evaluate, or even understand, anything you cannot measure.”

Feeling armed with knowledge, I set out on the first of the year to find out what I could change in one month following the Slow-Carb Diet.

1.1.17: 222.0 Pounds // 24% Bodyfat // 122.0 Total Inches

Inspired by stories of people in the book and posts like “How to Lose 100 Pounds on The Slow-Carb Diet” I was ready. I stepped on the scale, calculated my bodyfat percentage, and found my “Total Inches” by measuring around my waist, my hips, my arms, and my thighs.

This is the extent of the rules I followed, according to the above-linked post:

Rule #1: Avoid “white” starchy carbohydrates (or those that can be white). This means all bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, and grains. If you have to ask, don’t eat it.Rule #2: Eat the same few meals over and over again, especially for breakfast and lunch. You already do this; you’re just picking new default meals.Rule #3: Don’t drink calories. Exception: 1-2 glasses of dry red wine per night is allowed.Rule #4: Don’t eat fruit. (Fructose –> glycerol phosphate –> more bodyfat, more or less.) Avocado and tomatoes are excepted.Rule #5: Take one day off per week and go nuts. I choose and recommend Saturday.

That’s it.

Seriously.

30 days later I couldn’t believe the change.

I did take this on February 7th (Oops!) but my Feb 1 numbers were: 208.4 Pounds // 19% Bodyfat // 112.37 Total Inches

I know I was able to implement this diet because I had a psychological “out” on Saturday. I ate everything in sight, the one saturday I documented for the video review came in at a whopping 6275 calories… Check out the video below and skip to 5:20 to see pictures of all the junk food from that day.

In conclusion, I only read a part of the book, but that was the minimum effective dose that I needed to get on track to where I want to be. I’m not to either my goal weight or muscle mass yet. But as I write this post on Saturday (“Faturday”) at a Panera Bread after eating two chocolate pastries and downing a Crystal Pepsi, I can honestly say I’m having fun with this experiment.

Ryan Holiday, #1 bestselling author, writes on the topic of ego to address our addiction to the drug-like effects of buying into our own awesomeness.

Why would you pick this book off the shelves? This book gives practical applications to individuals interested in maintaining their success and avoiding failure due to ego.

We consistently find ourselves in three stages in life, aspiring, succeeding, or failing. In chapter 32, Holiday concludes a thought, “…ego makes all three stages harder, but it has the potential to make failure permanent.”

Holiday’s writing is highly influenced by stoic thinkers like Seneca and Marcus Aurelius. From a Christian perspective, this book is spot on, and Holiday points it out in chapter 9. He says that Christians approach the topic of ego by simply labeling it pride… and then agrees that you don’t have to be a Christian to agree that it is a bad idea all around. Over 2500 years ago King Solomon wrote,

Before a downfall the heart is haughty, but humility comes before honor.

Proverbs 18:12

He gets it.

In this week’s book review video, I point out that the idea that “you can be lesser, but still do more” is foreign to our culture and is worth reclaiming.

If you choose to read this book, you will be regaled with stories from throughout history of ego hindering the success of great men and women. Check out the three links below for a sample of the book: the first is the introduction and Ryan Holiday’s personal story; the second is a recording of a chapter entitled “What’s Important to You” one of the best of the book; the third is a review from Derek Sivers because he has 200 high quality book summaries on his site and he loves this book.

Who was the third person to fly across the Atlantic? You know the answer.

But before I remind you, Al Ries and Jack Trout have written a book with one of the most pretentious titles I have ever seen.

The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk!

Quite the proposition, but several of their laws are devastatingly accurate. While their examples are dated (I read the 1993 edition) it’s almost more fun that way to examine their predictions in light of 23 years of marketing between publishing and today’s reality.

So who was the third person to fly across the Atlantic? You’re practically dying to know.

You may know that the first man to fly across the Atlantic was Charles Lindberg on May 20, 1927. You may even remember that his plane was called “The Spirit of St. Louis.” But you’re wracking your brain to try and think of who this third person was.

Well, SHE happened to be the first woman to fly across the Atlantic, Amelia Earhart.

Ok, this is Amy Adams, but she plays a great Amelia Earhart in Night at the Museum 2!

This is where marketing happens.

Let me explain.

Ries and Trout say that our minds stick on the first in any category, they call this the Law of Leadership. This means that for instance, Redbull will probably always have a big portion of the energy drink market, because it was the first in people’s mind. Their second law, the Law of Category, is that you can always be first if you create a new category. That’s what’s going on with Amelia Earhart.

This book has 22 laws like these for you to digest. Personally, I disagree with their worldview that marketing actually changes truth. They say that there is no objective truth, that all truth is merely perception and that since perception is influenced by marketing, then marketing changes truth. This is quite the postmodern view, and I reject their conclusion. However, perception is real, and one would be hard pressed to argue that marketing doesn’t influence people.

You’ll also be hard pressed to read this book and not find a way to apply it to your business or life. If nothing else, I enjoyed it for fun nostalgia of the early nineties and to judge their predictions.

One has to take some of their “laws” with a grain of salt because according to the “Law of Line Expansion,” Microsoft is mere years away (in 1993) from failing as a company because they keep expanding their product lines.

I recommend this book with a caveat. Note the qualifications of the authors and the fact that this book is recommended by people like Tim Ferriss and Ryan Holiday. But remember, not all of the predictions they’ve made played out in that way in the real world. Don’t blithely follow a map that doesn’t accurately portray the territory.

Your personal reader, I’ll test the books in this series for you!

Jon DeLange is the owner of Jumpsix Marketing Grand Rapids and Director of Development at Lakeshore Pregnancy Center. Find him reviewing books on YouTube as "Why Should I Read That." Visit jondelange.com to keep in touch!